Turkey’s Unknown: Animation Cinema on The Footsteps of a Lost Film

Abstract

Instruments such as the praxinoscope, zoetrope, thaumatrope, and lantern magic, which form the basis of animated cinema, also played an important role in the invention of the cinematograph at the beginning of the century. At the beginning of the century, James Stuart Blacton, who is referred to as the “American father” of Stop Motion, began to combine the concept of live action film with cartoons at the Edisson Company in America. Working with Thomas Alva Edison, who invented the kinetograph and then the kinematograph in America, at the Vitagraph studio, Blacton showed the courage to bring the art of drawing to the big screen, starting with The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and continuing with Humorous Phases (1906). Afterwards, animation cinema continued its journey with Earl Hurd and Winsor Mccay, master cartoonists of the period, who patented cel animation in 1914.

While Earl Hurd was climbing the career ladder with “Bobby Bumps”, which was about the adventures of a dog and his friend, another colleague of his, Winsor Mccay, left his mark on the era with “Gertie The Dinosaur” (1914) and the Little Nemo comic strip that are etched in everyone’s mind.

In France, after the Lumierre brothers invented the cinematograph in 1895, cinema quickly took over the entire world. The magician of cinema, George Meliese, who was among the “happy few” who watched the first screening at the Eden Theatre in December 1895, took his place among the firsts who opened new horizons for many filmmakers. He spread his fame and technique beyond borders with the film tricks he used, and brought a new understanding to world cinema with films such as "Aya Yolculuk" (1902) and "İmkansız Yolculuk" (1904). Melies, who made approximately 531 films between 1896 and 1914, influenced not only Europe but also Edison's cinema in America with his horror, thriller, adventure and science fiction films, which dealt with disappearing objects, extraordinary events and fantastic approaches.  While these films he shot in the fields of fantasy, adventure and science fiction influenced Edison cinema in America, William Paul was continuing his film work in this field in England. "Fantasmagore", made by French filmmaker Emile Cohl in 1908, is considered the "first cartoon" in the history of world animation cinema. While Walt Disney has written own name in gold letters in the history of world animation cinema, Disney Studio's "Snow White and 7 Dwarfs -1937", although controversial, has gone down in literature as the first feature-length film.

The adventure of cinema in Turkey was that after the invention of the cinematograph, it reached wider audiences with public screenings and was met with great interest. However, the process of making films with stories unfortunately did not develop and flourish as quickly as watching them. While the process of shooting and showing the story films called “Casus and Bican Efendi Tedbili Havada” in our country dates back to 1917, the situation in terms of animation cinema indicates a slightly later period. It is possible to attribute the lack of films in the field of animation cinema to various misfortunes, but contrary to popular belief, one of the main purposes of this article is to try to date the history of animation cinema in Turkey a little further back, to the early 1900s. Known as “Bertrand the Juggler” from cinema books, this man, whose real name was Victor Effendi Bertrand and who screened the first film in the palace, is also the person who performed “The View of the Shadow” on the wall. This first feature-length and first color film, “Evvel Zaman İçinde”, which is the “lost film” of our cinema history, was revealed in 2014 with a book prepared by Burçak Evren and Müjgan Yıldırım. This film holds a very important place in the history of animation cinema in Turkey. This film holds a very important place in terms of the history of animation cinema in Turkey. In this article, while the "firsts" in animation cinema are questioned, the process is evaluated with a parallel narration from the world and Turkey, and the existence of the "lost film" is revealed with all the documents. At the same time, a new perspective is tried to be brought to the beginning of animation cinema in Turkey with Bertrand.